The New YNAB is Here

Every one of the YNAB team members is on pins and needles. Our support team is anxious to help you get to know the new software. Our instructors have a whole set of classes to get you started off right. Our developers and designers are thrilled to be able to show you their best work.

You can try the new YNAB right here.(Note: Existing YNAB4 users, you’ll need to create a new account—YNAB 4 or Dropbox credentials won’t work!) But, really! Try it!

You’ll of course have our standard 34-day trial to kick the tires and fall in love. The best way to get going is just to dive in.

We’ll be writing about all of the changes to the new YNAB over the next several weeks. It’s a total rewrite, so there are a lot of fantastic changes!

But first, big launches of New Things come with questions! Read on to have (probably, most) of your questions answered right off the bat:

How do I get started?

1. First, go ahead and create an account for the new web-based app on your desktop. (Credentials from your YNAB 4 or Dropbox accounts will not work—this is an all-new account!)

2. We love our mobile apps and they are full of new functionality and better than ever! Next, grab the new iPhone/iPad app or Android app.

3. Sign in on mobile, with the credentials you created in step #1, and you’ll be up and running!

What’s new?

Oh my that is a loaded question. You could take a tour if you’d like. Or poke around on the homepage. Wait, you wanted to have a YNAB Teacher guide you through some of the changes? Sign up for a live class.

…and here are a few more changes: You can now run YNAB in any modern browser without having to install a thing (or worse, having your work not allow you to install a thing). Syncing between devices and the app is much faster and more reliable. You can run YNAB on your tiny Chromebook, or massive Linux machine. Also, in full screen. The app is faster (and will get even faster). You can now fund future months. We have all new guides. You can move money with the mobile apps. Change the font size. Also, you can use emojis. EMOJIS.

Direct Import?!?!?!

Yes. We’ve long since held that direct import would kill awareness and so we’d never do it. But we realized we were wrong, wrong, wrong. The way we’ve built the new YNAB you can have transactions imported directly from your bank (so fast! so easy!), but you still have to assign them to the appropriate category. Way less tedium, without losing awareness. Also, you can still use our mobile apps on the go, and manual entry if you choose. Or a combination of it all. Win-win all around.

What will happen to YNAB 4?

We’ll officially support YNAB 4 until December 31, 2016—fixing mission-critical bugs, making sure the apps work great and answering all your support questions. After 2016, we will no longer push updates to YNAB4, but we will still happily support our YNAB 4 users. We have a great track record of supporting our customers on even our oldest products (like that time the other day, when someone wrote in asking about a spreadsheet we sold back in 2006.)

What about the mobile apps?

There’s been some confusion around the YNAB 4 mobile app (now called YNAB Classic)—we’re sorry about that!

If you want to stick with YNAB 4, fire up YNAB Classic on your phone and tap the “No Thanks, I’m sticking with YNAB 4 for now” button.

The apps for the new YNAB are called—wait for it—YNAB.

Can I import my YNAB 4 data?

Migrating your YNAB 4 budgets’ full data into the new YNAB has been less than stellar. Okay. Bad. There are two reasons for your justified confusion and frustration:

1. The new YNAB and YNAB 4 have some key differences. Because of that, when YNAB 4 data is migrated successfully, it can be confusing to reconcile the changes between YNAB 4 and the new YNAB.

2. Performance on the migration has been up and down like a penny stock, especially if your budget is quite large. The performance hits have been extremely frustrating.

We’re sorry.

Our short-term, immediate solution is Fresh Start migration.

As you know, we’ve been heavily promoting the idea of a fresh start. It gets you up and running right away and at the perfect time of year. It’s a great move for many people. Tens of thousands of users (including the whole YNAB Team) have started fresh and found it very valuable.

A Fresh Start migration will automatically bring over your personalized categories, payees, scheduled transactions, and account names & types from YNAB 4. It will give you a familiar starting place. In terms of the history, though, it will be a Fresh Start.

Whether you were planning on doing a fresh start anyway, or just want to kick the tires of the new YNAB, we encourage you to try it. It will give you a great starting point, and does all the heavy lifting for you.

We know some of you are anxious to get started, but want all your history in your budget. It will be possible, but we can’t say when. We can say that it’s quickly become our top priority for the first quarter. We are so sorry for the wait—we’re going to get it right.

Finally—we know this is getting long!—don’t worry, if you decide to wait, once we’re able to migrate all of your history, we’ll gladly restart your trial and honor your lifetime ten percent discount!

What’s new with YNAB, compared to YNAB 4?

That’s best explained in the YNAB 4 Transition Guide. There are awesome new features, and some deeper thinking and explanations around our Four Rules.

Will there be a desktop app for the new YNAB?

Yes. It’s on our roadmap as one of our first major initiatives.

What if I just bought YNAB 4?

If you purchased YNAB 4 within the last six months, then we’ll do what we’ve done with every new version launch.

Just sign up for the new YNAB with the same email address you used when purchasing YNAB 4 (although keep in mind, you will still be creating a new account), and we’ll make sure you have a trial that covers the free months given.

Is there a discount for existing YNAB 4 users?

Yes! We are offering a lifetime 10% discount for existing YNAB 4 users. We don’t want you to feel any anxiety about locking in that lifetime discount. If you sign up for the new YNAB with the same email address you used to purchase YNAB 4, you’ll automatically lock in the discount. Just set up that trial, and if you come back to subscribe in two weeks, two months, or two years, we’ll honor the 10% lifetime discount.

Should I just try it?

Yes. The best way to see what’s new is to just try it. If you’re a veteran YNABer, you’ll want to read the YNAB 4 Transition Guide. If you’re completely new to YNAB, just dive right in!

Your Next Step

Remember, budgeting is not restrictive. You won’t be spending less, you’ll be spending right. You can do this! Today. Right now. What do you have to lose? Except all that debt and stress. (Ok, so kind of a lot.)